July Beach Trip

Back to the beach we went! For this trip we went with Lolly, Poppy, Casey, Derek and Fischer to Gulf Shores. Mee Maw, Paw Paw and Pammie also came down for a couple of nights to celebrate the 4th. We spent an entire week (seven nights) in a house across the road from the beach. It was awesome!!! Being on the beach for the 4th, staying in a house versus a condo, and staying for this long was a new experience for us all. I am already going through withdrawls-ha! (But soooo glad to be home at the same time.) The theme of the vacay was "low key." Well, as low key as it could possibly be with that many people, including 3 children under age 3. But surprisingly, it was really relaxing. Of course we did see our fair share of oil :( Some days it was worse than others, but we managed to be entertained by plenty of other activities besides the beach alone.

I honestly don't know where to start with the pictures, as there are quite a few ;) So, here are my favorites. I'll start with the house, which was so kid-friendly and included a pool and play area with sand.

Not to mention the hammock on the front porch.... heavenly :)

We loaded up our festively clad kiddos and headed to the beach for fireworks on the 4th! Poppy had his hands full!

Clearly it was waaay past everyone's bedtime-ha!
Guess who got stuck in the sand trying to park?? Yep, that would be us. Some really nice people offered to help push us out. Priceless memories folks!

Heading to the beach in our festive swimwear

Enjoying some waves...

and the sun...

and most of all, the sand!

Oil or no oil, a beach sunset is awfully hard to beat.

One day during the week we tried out Waterville U.S.A. We expected the kids to only be able to last a maximum of 2 or 3 hours, but boy were we wrong. We stayed 6 hours and definitely got our money's worth.

Collin loves pirates so this ship/slide attraction made his day!

Brantlee became obsessed with this duck slide. I seriously think she rode it 100 times.

Fischer got brave and went down one of the really tall slides.

These poor babies wore themselves completely out! They were troopers to say the least.
Another evening we went to The Track amusement park. I am shocked at what these 3 were brave enough to ride all by themselves. Actually, the more I think about it, I can't believe we put Fischer and Brantlee on some of these rides. They aren't even 2 years old yet! HA

This is a baby ferris wheel. Even though it is completely caged and didn't go that high, I was a nervous wreck one of them was going to freak out and try to get out. YIKES! But I was wrong, they loved it!

Okay, so this airplane did go a little higher than I preferred. They did have on seat belts, but mom and I didn't actually breathe until they got off of this thing. Again, they loved it though.

And here we have the highlight of the night... the bumper boats. I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. The adults liked it way more than the kids I think.

Ahhh, the ride home... all things considered, the ride home was fairly uneventful.

Other than the fact that the inside of our vehicle looked ridiculous- HA!

Well that about sums up our vacation. We took some family beach pictures that I will post later. (And yes, we are wearing festive clothes again. I know, I know. We just couldn't help it.) Thank you, thank you, thank you Lolly and Poppy for such a wonderful and memorable vacation!!!!